Mom set me holiday homework. I was in charge of scanning in 4 photo albums she found in my grandma's house. She decided to bring it back and scan in the pictures. As the saying goes, "don't put all your eggs in one basket". If our house gets burned down, at least there will still be some photos at relative's houses. I spent a few nights doing this and felt very robot-like after that because I had to repeat the same procedure of scanning dunno how many times. 3 albums consisted of US photos and the other was Singapore. Here's some of my hardwork.

The following are mostly pictures taken when we were in US (1998-2001), with the exception of the last one.


This was taken on my 5th birthday, a few weeks after moving to US.

Same occassion. Mom said I looked like I was advertising for some toothpaste brand. I have no idea why Jean was carrying her tiny backpack but I remember that she kept insisting on carrying that to celebrate my birthday.

We went to visit the Niagra Falls and we got into a boat that brought us near the falls (not under it). Jean and I weren't too happy because we were all wet. Only my parents seemed to enjoy it.

This was taken at Rhode Island. I don't know why I was sitting there. Meditating?

Jean standing in front of our house. She looks very tiny. Once during Winter, our water pipe got frozen and there was no water supply to our house. So we had to get water from the supermarket for drinking and ate out whenever cooking was required. For showers, we went to dad's friend's hotel room (he happened to be staying in a hotel at the moment because he had just moved to US as well). Fortunately, it was fixed in a few days.

I took this photo! I can't remember where this was, but I think we were on vacation in one of the states.

The first time we had a real christmas tree for Christmas. Guess how people there transport their Christmas trees back home. Ok, they tie it to the roof of their cars. So we had our Christmas tree tied to the roof of one of our cars. Oh yea, we needed 2 cars in US because you don't usually see public transport and even taxis (mostly limousines) were rare enough. So 2 cars were essential and mom was forced to learn to drive in order to survive. Beside it is the fireplace, usually used in Winter (ok, obviously). I was quite fascinated with that. It looks like some bottomless pit or a black hole in this picture.

First Halloween. I was dressed up as some clown while Jean was some bear. We were quite clueless about what Halloween was about at that time. Our neighbours down our road lent us that costumes I think. The day was mainly spent trick-or-treating in school then at night around the neighbouring houses. Because the houses are generally further apart than in Singapore, you don't really get to go to many houses. Mostly walking, but it was quite fun. However, after learning that Halloween wasn't really biblically right, we didn't celebrate Halloween anymore.

First Thanksgiving in US. Yes, that's the turkey sitting on one of the plates. I think we had to eat that big bird over a few meals.

This was taken about 2 months before leaving for US. I don't know what the occassion was but mom likes this photo.